Category Archives: NE IPA

Friends of the show Deb and John took a trip to Indiana and ended up in Griffith where they discovered 2 of 3 great breweries in that town. Griffith is just over an hour from the Brit and Yankee pub here in the western suburbs, so very attainable as a day trip. Our friends visit Pokro Brewing and New Oberpfalz Brewing and return with 3 samples from each and report on the ambience to be found at each. Joining the pub crew and Deb and John, are listeners Big Dave and Big Nate for a final tasting panel of real consumers and craft beer fans.

Both of the breweries featured have a European flavor to their brews, Pokro specializing in Belgian, English and other European styles, and New Oberpfalz on German-influenced beers. We also have included an American IPA from each just to entice those who prefer that style.

By way of introduction, and because our first love is Illinois brews, we take a local brew from Noon Whistle that is a European style and make it our ‘warm-up’ brew, their Face Smack Berliner Weiss.

There’s plenty of pub chat, and the panel all have their own tastes so we think we got a pretty good representation of these breweries and the overall opinion is they are well worth visiting!

In this show, recorded live at the Church Street Brewing tap room, Phil and Mark select 4 brews from Illinois to celebrate Chicago Craft Beer Week which runs from May 18th through May 25th. Joining them once again are CSB’s head brewer, T.J. Bacholz, assistant brewer Chuck Fort, beer historian John Bittermann, and CSB owner, Lisa Gregor who keeps us all in check!

We have selected 4 brews we think you should try, all from Illinois breweries, near and far, new and well-established. In order of sampling we have Hailstorm, Noon Whistle, newcomer White Rooster, and finally old-timer Two Brothers.

This will be the last episode for a while as the staff are heading out in vacation, but stay tuned for new episodes later in June.